The present invention relates to a technique for studying and preventing geologic hazards such as landslides and slope failure, and more particularly, to an apparatus for a soil box experiment through which the behavior of a slope due to a shape and vibration of the slope is capable of being experimentally studied.
The landslides may occur when soil mass is slid along a top of a bedrock. A landslide surface may gradually form a slip failure surface to start an occurrence of sliding, thereby causing a debris flow. Thus, the behavior of the landslide surface may be classified into states before, during, and after the slope failure.
Very slow landslide that corresponds to the state before the slip may be progressed at a speed of about 10−6 cm/s or less. Here, although the soil mass on the slope is activated, it may be difficult to confirm the activation of the soil mass by using naked eyes. After the slope is failed, the soil mass may move as a speed of about 0.1 cm/s. If the behavior of the relatively quick landslide is called “very quickly moving landslide”, the progressing speed may reach about 5 cm/s. Also, the above-described landslide, if proper soil strength is reduced, like liquefaction of sandy soil, a debris flow may occur, and thus, the soil mass may move, like a fluid. Here, the soil mass may have a maximum speed of about 10 m/s.
The landslide may occur by various external factors such as earthquake (vibration), local torrential rainfalls, thaw, and the like, particularly, may mainly occur by the vibration and the local torrential rainfalls.
A soil box may be used as an experiment apparatus for studying the behavior of the landslide slope. The soil box has a box shape that is long in one direction and inclinedly disposed. Also, water may be supplied through an upper portion of the soil box. That is, a slope may be formed as the soil box is inclined, and a water supply may be used to simulate rain. The soil box may change in inclination, and also, a supply amount of water may be adjusted.
As described above, since the existing soil box is adjusted in inclination and water supply amount, the slope behavior due to the inclination and rainfall may be apprehended. However, it may be difficult to apprehend the slope behavior due to vibration of the slope.
Although existing soil boxes play important roles in modeling important factors of the landslides such as localized heavy rain and inclination, other factors such as earthquakes and even man-made vibrations such as those brought about by blasting in construction and civil engineering sites may also need to be considered.
Thus, the development of the soil box experiment apparatus in consideration of the vibration in the slope behavior is required.
Also, since the conventional soil box has the box shape, the soil box may have a flat bottom surface. Thus, it may be difficult to accurately reproduce an actual slope. This is done because the actual slope has various shapes in which convex and concave portions are repeatedly formed. Also, since the shape of the slope has a large influence on the debris flow, it is needed to develop the experiment apparatus through which the actual slope of the landslide surface is capable of being substantially reproduced.